non-lucid

Dream journal from 05/04/2022

Dreamed I went to Disneyworld and they required guests to roleplay just like the staff. Yup, this was just as annoying as it sounds.

Part of the roleplay was you needed to exchange real money for Disney money with its own conversion rate that was overly, probably intentionally convoluted. This made it hard to tell the prices in things and the staff weren’t allowed to tell you the conversion because it ‘broke character.'

I wanted to buy something that I couldn't tell if it was around $200 or something like $2,000 and the staff refused to help (and would remind you to stay in character if you asked).

Imagine communicating with words to a waking person while you're asleep and aware of both states, or being able to move your waking bvody (not just eyesn or fingertips, but the whole body) without waking up?

I've done both, with two vereified exeriences and several nonverified ones, and I want to become more proficient at this.

So I've been practicing and trying to learn how to do this more reliably. Some birds can sleep with one eye open, presumably asleep but able to watch their waking surroundings at the same time in the open eye. Inspiting!

My Unverified Experiences
I've WILDed with my eyes open a before and watched my bedroom change. I'm not sure at what point the real bedroom became a dream and don't have any memory of closing my eyes.
I also WILDed with eyes open in the car and watched out the window for about an hour, but asleep (my SO said I was snoring in waking reality). Music was playing. For me, it became distorted, but my SO told me (after I woke up) what song it was. So I'm not sure which or how much of my experiences were real or dream.

My Verified Experiences
- I asked my SO to wake me up once while lucid dreaming, because I was having trouble with it (normally I don't have trouble waking myself up from dreams, so this was rare). My SO actually did hear me ask for help in waking life, and woke me up.
- My SO was tossing and turning, I assumed having a nightmare, so I rolled over and gave SO a pat. I was still asleep, but had partial awareness of waking reality (could hear the noise machine, but only quietly). I became curious about how asleep I actually was, wanted to verify, so I woke myself up fully, at which point the noise machine became full volume and I was still in the same position, with my hand on my SO's back.

Last Night's Practice
In my lucid dream last night, I decided to think about my waking body and move my waking hands and arms, to see if I could do it without waking up. I also opened one of my 'waking' eyes to see my bedroom, testing if I could become aware of external environment without waking
I made two mistakes in judgement:
1. I was not actually seeing or interacting with waking reality this time, it was just another (nonlucid) dream. Whoops. Could have been a false awakening if I actually 'woke up' at this point, but I did successfully stay in the lucid dream.
2. I forgot I'm actually blind in one eye due to a congenital condition. so I have no conceptual idea what seeing out of two eyes is like. I assumed I was looking out of two eyes in the dream, like those birds, but the experience for me was the same as looking out of my only good eye. The scene switched back and forth between the lucid and nonlucid dream, but I was still only seeing out of the one eye.

This wasn't exactly a success for what I'm trying to learn, but I'm not going to view it as a failure. It was good practice. Plus now I can tell people I was lucid and nonlucid at the same time, for real.